


Dirty

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 8.07, M/M, Season gr8, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-20 09:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cradled on some sunlit porch, his and yours and us and ours. He loved you, me, us, we and shutting off the water he knew there was no kind of clean for that. Castiel's headspace 8.07/ Spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirty

Castiel was dirty.

 

It wasn’t just dirt or blood, it was everything. Hands braced on the sink and staring at his overgrown beard he couldn’t remember what clean even felt like. Showering was a human habit and he didn’t need to cleanse with convention but wanted to, wanted feel the water cascade over his tired body. Fully clothed he turned the tap, stepped under the spray and if it scalded that was fine- pain was relative, just another muted sensation.

 

Brackish water pooled at his feet, brown and black and blood. How much was his, how much was theirs and if he stood under the torrent forever would he be clean- no, probably not. He didn’t use soap, didn’t rub at the grime until it sloughed off leaving him pink-fresh and human. Instead, he lamented the lost loneliness of purgatory and let the steam eclipse both confusion and want.

 

In that dull grey place he’d been just another monster and there was an ease of living in that, a sense of same surrounded by the soul-broken and the lost. Dean had threaded himself through the eyelet needle of the universe and for the first time in a long time, Castiel had known peace. Live your life, hunt and fuck and marry and be a man for all the times I made you something else. If he couldn’t count Dean’s freckles, if he couldn’t hear the thump-a-bump of his heart, it was better. Dean in heaven, my father art and when he slipped through that seam the mantra faded: love and lay with me, I am your sullied angel no more.

 

Dean fell into his arms every night and every morning he stole back the memory, the confession. A thousand times he’d said I love you and forgotten because that day might be the day that Castiel shoved him back down the rabbit hole, forced him to let go. Soap could wash away so many things, but it could never purge I need you, I love you, together we’ll figure this out. Bleach away the stain, strip away the filth and how could he ever forget inside Dean’s head, inside his dreams, that he was there. Cradled on some sunlit porch, his and yours and us and ours. He loved you, me, us, we and shutting off the water he knew there was no kind of clean for that.

 

Kill him and he’d be reborn, that’s how causality and perpetuism was designed; monsters go to middleground, always and forever. If an angel was a killable thing he’d found immortality in that ugly place. Animal simplicity, perfect and archaic symmetry and now he was back, Dean’s bowed lips and his comfortable suspicion breaking his heart in inches. Selfishly he was happy, cruelly he was invested. What now, be a hunter, be a lover or a friend? Confess to every stolen memory, make him remember- no, never that. Purgatory was pure and earth was diluted, convoluted and he would never have to hear that confession again. If he could watch him every moment of every day and never kiss him, maybe that would be penance enough. Self-flagellation, it was the lather and rinse of the soul.

 

Water pooled at his feet, soaked the linoleum as it pat-pitter-patted from the tatters of his coat and for reasons he didn’t understand, he turned on the taps in the sink. Washing his hands was symbolic so he did, warm and wet and rub and scrub until there’s nothing but bone. A snap of the fingers and he was neat and pressed, shaven the way he was in Dean’s thoughts. Just a memory, a fragment in a trench coat because it was iconic, crooked tie because before every case Dean would straighten it, shiny shoes, short-cropped hair. These were the summations of what he was- Kodak picture-perfect, lemon and fresh.

 

Stepping out of the bathroom and toweling his hands he asked, “Better?”

 

And for Dean, he did it with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Reasons why you shouldn’t let me have feelings about things and stuff. *Toddles back to work on Wincestiel big!Bang* Ya’ll know better than to let me outside, jeesh.


End file.
